Grindstone

So, it's been a pretty good week. I still like my classes, and my international relations one is turning out to be really fascinating.

I spent most of the day today in the lab for the research group I'm a part of now. I'm still way out of my depth, and hoping I get up to speed on things soon. We had a meeting today and I felt a bit off talking in front of everyone, but nobody seemed to think that I'd said anything horribly idiotic or anything, so that was good. It looks like I'm going to probably spend most of Tuesdays and Thursdays (and Friday afternoons?) working on the project.

Which means...evenings and weekend for getting stuff done for my other classes. I have two papers due next week and a quiz, which hopefully won't be too awful. I'm going to have to spend most of this weekend reading, though, since I've been lazy (oh and social) up until now and really put off some stuff that I could have cut through over the long weekend. The stress is nowhere near where it was, say, sophomore year though so I'm still pretty happy.

Actually, I'm really happy. I found out a few days ago that I was selected for an award they give out at the department level for being a stellar student and leader. I was really flattered, and kind of taken back...given how often I've talked about wondering if I really belong at CMU it was cool to see that over the past few years I actually have come out of my shell quite a bit, and seemingly made a difference to people around me. Oh, and done relatively well in class. So, yay for me.

Anyway, yeah. I guess this is the part of the semester where I fall back into the "nose to the grindstone" routine. I'm actually looking forward to being back in the "thinking hard, working hard" mode...if it's my last time, it might as well be the best one.